Next week, we head to Berlin for a international buyers screening. Already got a sweet offer from strong UK distrib, so hoping the rest of the territories sell well. Once we know which distrib/country have them, we can start planning RedStateInternational tours: like a week across England. Or a RedProvinceTour in Canada – all well before 10/19 US release.

As has been written numerous times, RED STATE isn’t exactly a horror film, though Kevin Smith certainly thinks it is, having argued rather strongly that the ideas he plays around with in it are truly frightening. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that, structurally speaking, it simply isn’t one. What heís made is satire. Pure, straight from the bottle satire. Far too often people mistake parody for satire and they forget that films like this certainly qualify. RED STATE is Smith’s manifesto on what is wrong with this country, laying bare his fears of what religious and political extremism mean for the future of our society. It is not a nice film nor are its ideas very pretty, but it isn’t horror.

What it happens to be is good. Very good.

…

RED STATE neither looks nor feels like anything Smith has ever made before, which of course I mean in the best way possible. Everything about this technically is heads and shoulders above everything else he’s ever done. The cinematography truly captures the look and feel he’s aiming for; the acting is several notches above every performance he’s ever gotten out of an actor; and there isn’t a single moment of anything resembling Smith-speak in the entirety of the film. It is every bit a film separate from his filmography as MATCHPOINT was to Woody Allen’s. Were you to remove Smith’s name from the credits, no one would remotely fathom this was one of his films. It is a lightspeed jump as an artist that shows – despite his recent antics a new found maturity as a filmmaker, proving him to be somebody with something to say and the talent to say it without having to always be in frame when it is said.